I worked almost continually hauling freight during the summer of 1867 as the railroad came ever closer to Cheyenne. I would bring in a load, spend the night at home, then depart with a fresh team the following morning. I worked day in, day out without a break. The constant work was a palliative of sorts for me and not at all unpleasant. I was finally doing what I had dreamed of for years. Alice McDougal went with me on trips that did not require more mules than could be controlled from the driver's box. She loved driving the team and she was becoming very good at it. I was amazed that fiery little Alice never lost her temper with the mules. She had an easy explanation for that when I asked her about it. "The mules make mistakes because they don't know any better, Jeb, but they seldom make the same mistake twice. How many people can you say that about?" She had a point.
Alice was twelve now and proud as punch that she had grown a few inches. She was still a slip of a thing, although it was not a good idea to point that out to her. She was the smallest person in the family, as even her younger step-brother Morgan shot by her in his latest growth spurt, yet she was the most daring and feisty of the bunch. She was a natural leader and a master at flimflamming the other children into whatever she schemed. Alice was also very intelligent; she was smart enough to stay out of trouble with the adults and stayed out of everyone's way but mine. She became the little sister I never had.
I did not have an opportunity to talk with JC about Grenville Dodge until the middle of August. I had to wait a couple of months for JC to be home and Dodge to be elsewhere. As I waited for a good time to approach my old friend, I could not help but to notice how he seemed to be emulating Dodge in how he spoke and dressed. He wore suits mostly now and he worked hard at losing his Texas drawl. I finally walked over to his house one evening and asked if he could spare me a few minutes of his time. JC looked at me for a second then ushered me into his house.
"You know I always have time for you Jeb; you are the one that is never around," he said as if he were exasperated with me.
I shrugged my shoulders in reply and walked into his front room. Anne gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. Anne was very obviously pregnant and she looked radiantly happy. My nieces, Ruth and Rose, both gave me hugs as well. I will admit that I enjoyed Ruth's hug very much as she pressed her tall and well developed body against me. JC had made a number of improvements to their house. The floors were wood planks instead of packed dirt and the walls were plastered and whitewashed. JC walked me to the kitchen table as Anne bustled around fixing us a cup of coffee. She plunked our coffee down on the table and excused herself so we could talk. As soon as Anne was out of earshot, I said my piece.
"JC, I do not trust Grenville Dodge even a little bit. I also do not like the idea of our family becoming so cozy with him. It bothers me that you and Sean are partnered up with him and it worries me that Rachael is romantically involved with him."
JC regarded me over the top of his coffee cup for almost half a minute before saying anything, then he sighed and set his cup on the table. "Dodge has been fair and honest in his dealing with us, Jeb. As far as I know, he is a respected and upright man. What is it about him that you do not trust?"
I was slightly embarrassed that I could not give him a definitive answer. "I cannot put my finger on any one thing, JC. I just have a bad feeling about him."
JC gave me another one of those searching looks because, during the war when I had those feelings, they were right more often than wrong. His answer acknowledged that, "I think you are wrong this time Jeb." After giving me a thoughtful look he continued, "Are you sure your feelings are not jealousy because Grenville is sparking Rachael?"
I sat back in my chair stunned that JC could think such a thing. Of course, I just finished all but accusing him of being in partnership with a crook, so I did not have a case for righteous indignation. "Look, JC," I said, "I care a lot about Rachael just as I do all of my family, you included. I worry about her being hurt by Dodge. "
JC snorted derisively and said, "I doubt Dodge could hurt her any more than you already have, no matter what he did."
I winced and nodded ruefully to acknowledge the validity of his statement. "That may be so, but I did it through stupidity. Dodge, on the other hand, is not stupid. Everything he does is calculated."
JC and I both stuck to our views of Dodge, yet we parted still best friends. The issue wasn't important enough for either of us to sacrifice our friendship. JC did agree that he would caution Dodge on the consequences of hurting Rachael. I felt better just by him doing that.
I had plenty of time to think about Dodge, Rachael and my family on my trips back and forth to the railhead. Not that it did me much good, especially in the case of Rachael. Despite being twenty-one and all I had lived though, and regardless of my being sexually experienced, I found that women were unimaginably complex and unfathomable. That Rachael harbored such strong feelings for me was a complete shock to me. I knew we had a strong sexual attraction for each other and thought we had a shared love as family; anything beyond that was a surprise. Knowing that I stupidly flaunted my relationship with Colette and hurt Rachael made me feel lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut.
In September of 1867, I traveled to Sydney, Nebraska to buy a couple of large Percheron mares and the biggest jackass I had ever seen. No, let me amend that; it was the biggest four legged jackass I've ever seen. The jack and mares were the first step toward our dream of breeding our own mules. JC put up half the money for the new stock and I put up the other. Our homestead was perfect for raising a few horses and mules, but it was too hilly and heavily forested to ranch. That is why the small valley was still unclaimed when we arrived in Wyoming. JC still planned on owning a cattle ranch and was negotiating thru Grenville Dodge to purchase three thousand acres of open range owned by the Union Pacific.
The railroad finally arrived in Cheyenne early in November of 1867. The town that had only existed on paper six months previous now had a population of four thousand people. Cheyenne quickly became as rough a place as Boulder, Colorado had been. While the railroad was under construction nearby, railroad men called Railroad Regulation Enforcement Officers, or Regulators for short, kept the peace. Problems arose when the Regulators moved west with the construction gangs leaving Cheyenne virtually lawless. Cheyenne's leading citizens formed a town council to address the problem in December of 1867. Their first official act was to appoint JC Colbert as Mayor Pro Tem.
JC, in turn, convinced me to accept a temporary appointment as Town Marshall until someone permanent was found. I did not want any part of the job but was guilted into it when JC asked me why I would not do for my family and home what I did for strangers down in Boulder. I took the job before the marshal's office and four cell jail were built. I followed Bob Randolph's example, and hired my own peace keepers and posted the same list of rules. The jail was completed on January the fifteenth; it was full of prisoners by the sixteenth. The jail stayed mostly filled for the next ten days as the peace keepers and I enforced the Cheyenne Town Code posted in each bawdy house, saloon and dance hall. Once the miners, railroad men and cowboys understood that misbehaving was not tolerated, things settled down.
I worked day and night for the first two weeks backing up the peace keepers with my shotgun and brawn. Everyone knew me after a week or so, and I had a fair grasp on the temperament of many of our citizens. One group with whom I established an excellent rapport was the fallen doves working at the entertainment establishments. I think that the women helped keep the peace almost as much as my deputies once I convinced them that they should insist men act properly. I got on well with the town folk; I did not with the miners, drovers and railroad men. I do not know if it was because I looked young or if it was general animus towards my badge but for whatever reason, it seemed that every night someone tested me.
I was involved in my first duel during those weeks. The event was a first I would rather have avoided because of the sheer barbarism of it. The duel was thrust upon me by a drunken cowhand from one of the big spreads up state. He and his friends were in town after driving five hundred head of cattle to our new railhead for shipment to Chicago. Ironically, the herd he drove into our new cattle yard was the first to arrive in town. The cattle pens on the west end of town were owned by JC and Dodge. JC purchased the cattle while Dodge arranged for their shipment and sale in Chicago, and the two men split the profits. The young cowboy who challenged me had collected his pay after the cattle drive and headed for the first saloon he saw. Four hours later I walked into the same saloon just as he pulled his pistol and shot another man over a hand of cards.
The young cowboy's gun play was the first time I saw a man draw his pistol from its holster and fire it in one motion. I was amazed at the speed with which he completed the maneuver. As his victim fell to the ground the young cowboy looked around wildly, his pistol swinging in erratic arcs. I was in a quandary over how to handle the gun waving cowboy because the crowd in the saloon made using my shotgun too dangerous. I carried a pistol but it was in an old Union holster with a flap that prevented the pistol from falling out whilst riding. As the young drover assimilated the shock of taking another man's life, I eased open the holster flap and started to pull my pistol.
The cowboy caught my movement and swung his pistol barrel in my direction. In a move born of self preservation, I dropped to the floor and completed extracting my pistol as the bullet he fired whistled over my head. I yelled at him to drop his piece but he chose instead to start pulling back the hammer on his big Colt Army. I fired before he could complete the maneuver. Thankfully for the cowhand, the round I fired was off aimed and hit him in the right shoulder instead of the chest as I intended. My errant shot caused the cowboy to drop his weapon and sag back against the table where two other men quickly penned him down. I gave his wound a cursory inspection, sent for the town's new doctor and undertaker, then hauled the cowboy off to jail.
The cowboy was my introduction to the new breed of western desperados making their way north from Texas and the New Mexico Territory. The men called themselves gunslingers and took great pride in their fast draw techniques. I was to have a number of run-ins with the breed in the coming years, both those hired to enforce the law and those who were outlaws. I never trusted any of them because they switched sides with alarming regularity. I met men who were rustlers one day and U.S. Marshals the next. I commandeered the fancy gunbelt, holster and shooting iron of my prisoner and secretly practiced drawing and firing for hours on end. I never became as good as the best of them but my war experience made me careful and alert. I never put myself in a position where my only option was to draw down on someone.
Shooting the cowboy solidified my reputation as a man who would not shy away from a fight while carrying out my duties. The shooting and stories that drifted up from Boulder also earned me the unwanted and undeserved reputation as a steely-eyed killer. Although I hated to be thought of that way, my reputation made men think twice about challenging me.
It is not hard to imagine the growing pains Cheyenne suffered during its first year as a town when you consider that it went from a population of zero to five thousand in only eight months. The influx of people far exceeded construction of places for them to live. The lack of housing led to a shantytown popping up to the north of the town along the creek that led up to our homestead. People in the shantytown passed the harsh winter in tents and hastily cobbled together huts. Residents of the shantytown were mostly families in which the husband worked in some construction trade, building the money making businesses on Cheyenne's main street. I made it a part of my job to look out for those people's welfare. My Ma was a great help in that, as were Rachael, Anna, Florence and the wives of the Mormonites.
My amazing mother successfully petitioned JC, Sean and Grenville Dodge to build a two room schoolhouse out that way. Ma taught the older kids while Anne's daughter Ruth, now close to turning sixteen, taught the younger ones. Ma was nearing sixty-five yet she had the vigor of a woman much younger. She was deeply concerned with the plight of the children in shantytown and strove to make life better for them. Despite all our efforts, many people died in shantytown during that long grueling winter and most of those deaths were women and children.
Everyone in Cheyenne was more than ready when springtime came to us. By the middle of April we had essentially thawed out and the snow at the lower elevations was melting rapidly. The warm weather brought a frenetic building boom. Railroad construction also began anew as a spur line was started, heading south to link Cheyenne with Denver, and the route west was continued into Utah. General Dodge gained the rights for the rail line to Denver in 1867 when gold was discovered up in the South Pass region of central Wyoming. Dodge and JC opened an assay office at their bank to service the prospectors. The railroad spur line would facilitate moving the gold from Cheyenne to the Denver mint, and connect Denver to the rest of the Union Pacific system.
The result of all this was a sharp increase in the number of entertainment establishments on main street and a corresponding jump in the number of men visiting them. One of the things I insisted on was that the entertainment businesses not try to cheat their guests. I was hard nosed about running a clean town and that earned me the respect of the men visiting Cheyenne for a good time. My rapport with the fallen doves working the saloons and dance halls helped as the girls told me where the crooked card games and other cheats were held. I ran a number of card sharps and confidence men out of Cheyenne in a very public manner to discourage others of their ilk. Along the way, I made a number of enemies.
One of those enemies was Rafe Duggins, the owner of one of the largest saloons in town. His Golden Palace was also the source of much trouble for me. My deputies or I were there nearly every night breaking up some sort of fracas. I suspected that Duggins was running some crooked games, but I couldn't catch him in the act and his bar girls and dancers feared him too much to tell me about it. The situation with Duggins came to a head when he killed two railroad men in a gunfight over a card game. According to witnesses, the railroad men had lost all of their money and accused Duggins of cheating. Everyone who saw the fight agreed that, while Duggins had acted in self defense, he used much more violence than the situation warranted. After I concluded my investigation and the bodies of the hapless railroad men were removed, I pulled Duggins aside for a little chat.
"One more incident Duggins and I'll close your place down. The same applies if I catch you cheating or even short-changing someone," I warned.
Duggins looked at me coldly and spoke his mind. "Do not threaten me boy," he growled. "Bad things happen to those foolish enough to do that."
I did not respond to his threat, but I reiterated my warning and walked away. I was foolish enough to think that a man like Duggins would heed my warnings, and for a week or so it appeared I was correct. Then one night on my rounds, a girl named Beverly who I was friendly with gave me some disturbing news. Beverly was a dancer at the Whistle Stop Saloon and Dancehall, and we were actually dancing when she relayed her tidbit.
"A girl I know over at the Palace told me that her boss was boasting that he has hired an assassin to kill you Jeremiah, so you need to be extra careful," she whispered in my ear.
Beverly was not a beautiful woman, but her smile and sparkling personality made up for anything she lacked. We were occasional lovers as well as friends. We were very well matched in bed and I would have enjoyed spending more time in one with her. It was Beverly who limited our time together. When I asked her why, her answer surprised me. "I enjoy our time together too much Jeremiah, which is why I do not see you that often. I am already halfway in love with you and if I had you more, I would want you even more." The night she warned me about Duggins plans her affection for me was obvious by the way in which she worried about me.
I took Beverly's warning to heart and became even more careful during my evening rounds. I also asked Beverly to see if she could pinpoint when Duggins' hired killer would arrive. I wanted to end the attempt on my life before it started. Around noon, three days later, Beverly dropped by my office and informed me that the man had arrived. She even provided me with his description.
At three that afternoon I strolled over to the Golden Palace, my shotgun freshly loaded with double-ought buckshot and my pistol reloaded with new powder and primers. I was dressed in my Sunday suit and wearing the new black Stetson I bought the week before. My silver marshal's badge was freshly polished as were my best Wellington boots. I was prepared to make a grand exit if it was my day to die. I know that sounds melodramatic but listen, after all I'd been through in my life, this was the first time I ever went looking for trouble. I was sailing uncharted waters.
I walked through the swinging doors of the Palace as if I owned the place, stepping to my right as the doors swung closed behind me. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the saloon, I spotted Duggins sitting at a table in the back with a dapper man wearing a black leather vest and a low crowned, narrow brimmed, black leather hat. As I marched toward their table, the man's glittering obsidian eyes stared unblinkingly into mine. He had a smug little half smile on his face as he shifted slightly in his chair so that his right hand and gun were unobstructed. I watched him carefully and when his right shoulder twitched I casually pulled back the rabbit ears on my stage gun. The man smirked when I did that and put both his hands on the table in front of him. I eased the hammers closed on the shotgun as I reached the table.
"You would not shoot me in cold blood, would you boy?" the man said.
"Not before I give you a chance to leave town," I replied.
With that ever present smirk, the man said, "Why would I leave town, boy? I just got here and I was thinking of staying a spell."
I shrugged and slammed the butt of my shotgun down on the back of his right hand that was resting on the table. The man screamed and fell backwards out of his chair. Duggins reached for his pistol then, so I slammed the barrels of the scatter gun down on his right shoulder. When I hit him I clearly heard bone break. Duggins moaned and slumped forward but stayed in his chair. I walked around the table and pulled the gunman back into his chair by his collar. I turned his head so we were eye to eye again.
"I'm going to send for a doctor and have him do what he can for your hand. As soon as the doc finishes with you, climb on your horse and get out of my town. If I see you after the sun sets, I will throw you under the jail, understand?" When he nodded I turned my attention to Duggins. "As for you, Duggins, I'm shutting you down. I want this place empty and the door nailed shut by dark. I will give you three days to put your affairs in order and leave town. Come Friday, if I lay my eyes on you I am going to arrest you for attempted murder, got it?"
One of the bartenders fetched old Doc Reilly. It was early enough in the day so that the sawbones was fairly sober when he splinted the cowboy's broken fingers and smashed thumb. I posted a couple of my deputies at the saloon to help Mister Gunslinger on his way, then changed clothes and went back to work. I was not especially proud of the way I had acted, but I had done what I thought I needed to do.
As in many things in my life, I had badly miscalculated when I tried to run Duggins out of town. I had never paid any attention to politics, so I did not know that he was in thick with three of the five members of the town council. JC set me straight on that the next day when he dropped my office at noon. JC looked uncomfortable as he pushed his hat back on his head and leaned back in his chair. "Jeb, Rafe Duggins has petitioned the town council for an emergency hearing concerning official misconduct by you. We are meeting this afternoon at three and you are required to be there."
I walked into the closed-door council meeting, angry and anxious to defend my good name. I also walked in the door as a complete neophyte in the way politics work in real life. Once the council was called into session, Rafe was asked to state his case. It took every bit of self control I had to keep from exploding as Duggins proceeded to mix two half truths amongst more lies than I could count. When it was my turn to tell my side of the story, JC skillfully questioned me in a manner that forced me to answer with specifics instead of giving vent to my anger. In the end I was cleared of any wrong doing, but my closure decree for the Golden Palace was rescinded.
Instead, the council voted three to two to give Duggins a warning and sixty days probation, after which the matter would be reexamined. I was gratified that JC and Sean both backed me unquestioningly. Nonetheless, I tossed my badge on the council's table on my way out of the room. I was not about to keep the job if a bunch of crooked politicos could overrule my decisions. JC followed me out of the meeting room and asked me to at least stay on another month, but that was not going to happen. Serving as marshal while Duggins ran his saloon would mean that I condoned what he was doing. If I learned anything from serving under Robert E. Lee it was that once you started compromising your integrity it was nearly impossible to reclaim it. The best of my former deputies was promoted to take my place and I went back to hauling freight with no hard feelings. Heck, all I had ever wanted to be was a muleskinner anyway.
In less than a week I was back in the freight business bigger than ever. In May I started making a weekly run to the gold mining towns up in the South Pass. South Pass City was the largest of the gold towns in Sweetwater County because it was the closest to the Carissa Lode. The Carissa Lode was a large gold deposit along Willow Creek. A man named Readall was constructing a mine at the site of the lode and I was transporting his supplies and equipment from the railhead in Cheyenne. It was an eighty-five mile trip one way, through some hostile territory. I used a twenty mule team to transport the heavy mining equipment, the biggest team I had ever driven. I put old Zeke as the lead mule and rode him as I controlled the jerk line that kept the other mules following us. Because of the hardship of the trip and the danger of attacks from the Sioux Indians, I made the trip alone.
In the middle of June of 1868, I encountered four unusual people at the base of Little Baldy Mountain on a return trip from South Pass City. They were flagging me down so I whoaed my team and dismounted. At the time I did not have a clue that the chance meeting would lead to an adventure that made my life to date seem bland.